Trajectories of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness during the COVID-19 pandemic: A person-oriented multi-trajectory approach

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented changes in the lives of many people. Although research has documented associations between concerns related to COVID-19 and poor mental health indicators, fewer studies have focused on positive factors that could help people better cope with this stressful social context. To fill this gap, the present research investigated the trajectories of self-compassion facets in times of dramatic social change. Using a longitudinal research design, we described the trajectories of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a representative sample of Canadian adults (N = 3617). Relying on a multi-trajectory group-based approach, we identified clusters of individuals following persistently low (4.0%), moderate-low (39.3%), moderate-high (46.7%), and high (10.0%) levels of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Interestingly, we found that compassionate self-responding trajectories were mainly stable over time with minor fluctuations for some groups of individuals, in line with the epidemiological situation. In terms of covariates, we observed that older women were more likely to follow trajectories of high compassionate self-responding, as compared to the other age and gender groups. In terms of mental health indicators, we demonstrated that trajectory groups with high levels of compassionate self-responding were associated with greater life satisfaction, more happiness, better sleep quality, higher sleep quantity, and fewer negative emotions, as compared to lower trajectory groups. The results supported the idea that self-compassion during the COVID-19 pandemic could have favored better mental health indicators and could possibly be promoted as a psychological intervention in the general population.


Response: This suggests that Reviewer #1 has revised an obsolete version of our work. This is a good point to consider and we rewrote a paragraph about missing values and planned missingness (see your point 3 below).
Other comments not addressed from first review: I would have expected these points to be added to the limitations section: 3) The paper is also limited by common method bias which can inflate correlation scoresparticularly as only positive elements of the SCS were used.
Response: This suggests that Reviewer #1 has revised an obsolete version of our work.This is an important limitation and we did it: "In addition, it is pertinent to note that the correlational design could have generated common method bias.These bias may occur in studies where data for both independent and dependent variables are obtained from the same person in the same measurement context, using the same item content, and similar item characteristics.In the present study, these bias might have inflated observed correlations."4) I would also suggest that paper is limited by measures of mental health outcomes only being measured at one time point.There is evidence that mental health outcomes fluctuated as selfcompassion levels fluctuated.
Response: This suggests that Reviewer #1 has revised an obsolete version of our work.This limitation has also been added: Moreover, standardized measures of mental health usually ask participants to provide their answers over a specific period of time.While we asked participants to describe the quantity and quality of their sleep within the last twenty-four hours, we only relied on a state based measure rating current levels of particular emotions, which limits what conclusions can be drawn about mental health.Similarly, the present research is limited by measures of mental health outcomes only being measured at one time point.There is evidence that mental health outcomes may fluctuate in relation to changes in self-compassion.Future research should investigate trajectories of mental health indicators and explore their conditional probabilities with self-compassion trajectories.
Ultimately, we would like to thank again the Reviewer #1 for his/her precious contribution to the present manuscript.We sincerely hope that he/she will be able to see this improved version and accept to comment it.The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."3. We have removed any funding-related text from the manuscript and consequently, the Acknowledgments Section was deleted.4.You requested to specify where the minimal dataset underlying the results described in our manuscript can be found.We put all online information (including the dataset) in a public repository.Specifically, "Raw data, syntax, questionnaires, and additional elements can be found in the online supplementary material (https://osf.io/t3xzy/?view_only=4c949649ad3f469c909ad93900551e94)."Thank you for updating our Data Availability statement to reflect the information we provided above.5. Thank you for pointing out that Table 6 was not cited in the text.Importantly, the Table 6 has now been moved to the online supplementary material and has been adequately cited as Table S1.6.For the ease of the reader, we did not resubmit the supporting information files at the end of the manuscript.Specifically, and in line with point 4 above, we simply indicated the link to the public repository.

Cover letter and responses to
Finally, the manuscript has been edited for English language usage and grammar by a native English-speaking proofreader who reviewed the entire manuscript.We hope the result will meet your expectations.As a result of these changes, we believe the manuscript has substantially improved.We hope that you will concur with us and we are looking forward to reading your reaction to this new version of our paper.Thank you for considering our revised manuscript.

Sincerely,
The Authors

PONE-D-22-01485
The dynamics of self-compassion in Canadian adults during the first 8 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: A person-oriented multi-trajectory approach PLOS ONE Dear Dr. [BLINDED FOR PEER REVIEW], Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE.After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE's publication criteria as it currently stands.Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below.
The reviewers have raised a number of major concerns.They request improvements to the reporting of methodological aspects of the study, for example to clarify how self-compassion has been operationalised and the associations between the latent classes and covariates/outcomes.
Could you please carefully revise the manuscript to address all comments raised?
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Introduction
In general, the introduction is very long and needs to be made more concise.There is limited justification for why only compassionate responding is used and why factors associated with mental health outcomes are looked at rather than direct measures of mental health etc.

Response:
We have added a rationale for focusing on compassionate self-responding during the COVID-19 pandemic and for our choice of mental health indicators.Additionally, we have shortened the introduction, when possible.
1) Neff ( 2003) is referenced for the conceptualisation of self-compassion and justification for the research, but the method does not measure self-compassion.It only measures levels of compassionate responding and ignores levels of uncompassionate responding.However, according to Neff, self-compassion consists of 3 sets of opposing elements to form a global self-compassion score (self-kindness vs. self-judgement, mindfulness vs. over identification and common humanity vs isolation).The introduction discusses the opposing elements of compassionate responding (e.g.selfjudgement, isolation and over-identification) to form the justification for this research, yet these elements are not measured.There needs to be some justification in the introduction why this study only looks at the three positive elements of self-compassion.
Response: In this study, we focused on the positive elements of self-compassion to untangle the role of compassionate self-responding from that of its negative aspects.We had a particular interest in the positive aspects of self-compassion because these aspects tend to be the focus of interventions to increase self-compassion through kindness, acceptance, and affection toward the self.This has been clarified throughout the paper.
2) The language used to describe self-compassion also needs changing to reference it as compassionate self-responding rather than self-compassion, as it currently implies that global selfcompassion is being measured, e.g.: "In addition, while it has been demonstrated that the combination of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness reflects a global score of self-compassion (Neff et al., 2017)" "…how each dimension of self-compassion changes over time…" Response: As suggested, we have changed "self-compassion" to "compassionate selfresponding" when necessary.For instance, the new title of the study is: "The dynamics of compassionate self-responding in Canadian adults during the first 8 months of the COVID-19 pandemic: A person-oriented multi-trajectory approach".We adjusted the manuscript accordingly.
For example, we wrote in the introduction: "The purpose of the present research is threefold: ( 3) The majority of the research referenced in relation to mental health also uses the self-compassion scale which measures all 6 elements, not just 3. The evidence in relation to mental health needs to be more in line with the compassionate responding, rather than global self-compassion, to strengthen the argument.
Response: The reviewer is right in saying that we studied participants' self-compassionate responding toward events related to the COVID-19 crisis specifically.The entire paper (including the title and abstract) has been revised accordingly.
ii.I raise this because the wording of the self-compassion items are difficult to interpret and I imagine participants interpretation of "related to the COVID-19 crisis" element of the items varied quite widely.Did you do any qualitative work with participants to explore their understanding of the question?If so, it would be good to include this to justify the wording.
Response: We agree that the manuscript did not clearly state that we assessed participants' self-compassionate responding to events related to the COVID-19 crisis specifically, and not self-compassion in general.This has been clarified throughout the manuscript.We also added a rationale for focusing specifically on compassionate self-responding during the current COVID-19 pandemic.Please note that all the items used targeted this construct of compassionate self-responding "during the current COVID-19 pandemic", regarding "their reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic" or "when something happens to them related to the COVID-19 crisis" specifically.The high correlations between the three adapted items suggested that participants also felt that these items assessed a clear common construct.
iii.Did you run any validity checks comparing responses to these items to items from the self-compassion scale?
Response: Given that the items evaluating self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness were framed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not measure the original items.
We included this as a limitation in the discussion.Importantly, we ran correlations between items and found that self-kindness was positively correlated with common humanity (r = .50,p < .001)and mindfulness (r = .48,p < .001)and the two latter were positively correlated with each other (r = .38,p < .001) at wave 1.Similar findings were observed for each of the other waves.As stated above, this suggests that these items are assessing the same variable.
iv. Do you have a measure of reliability of these singular items?
Response: Yes, we do.In fact, we added McDonald's omegas for each measure, including for the compassionate self-responding items.The internal consistency ranged from acceptable to good for the compassionate self-responding and were excellent for the dependent variables.
b. Usually standardized measures of mental health ask respondents about their mood or behaviour over a period of time.However, the measure of mood used here is a statebased measure rating current levels of particular emotions.This limits what conclusions can be drawn about mental health.For example, the person may have been really calm when filling in the questionnaire, but over the past two weeks had been highly worried.
Response: This is an important point to consider.It is pertinent to note that some of our indicators are capturing participants' responses over a period of time.For instance, regarding sleep quantity, we asked participants how much sleep, in hours and minutes, did they get in the last 24 hours.Similarly, and for sleep quality, we measured the subjective qualitative facet of sleep by asking participants how they would describe the quality of their sleep during the last 24 hours.However, we agree with you that this could have been done for emotions as well.Consequently, we added a limitation in the discussion.Specifically, we wrote: "Moreover, standardized measures of mental health usually ask participants to provide their answers over a specific period of time.While we asked participants to describe the quantity and quality of their sleep within the last twenty-four hours, we only relied on a state-based measure rating current levels of particular emotions, which limits what conclusions can be drawn about mental health."

Results
-Multinomial modeling of trajectories is not something I have read about before, so any comments come from the perspective of a lay reader.
o I was expecting to see some analysis that demonstrated the degree of change in selfcompassion over time from baseline, for each trajectory group.
Response: This is an interesting point to consider.The paper of van der Nest et al. ( 2020) offers a very detailed and clear approach to different longitudinal growth models.In the present paper, we relied on a person-oriented multi-trajectory approach which is a groupbased trajectory method from a latent class grow analysis (see Figure 1  o It is mentioned that there are groups that show more persistent patterns, but there is no evidence that the change in pattern within the trajectory groups were significantly different between groups.It is unclear how the "more persistent pattern" was identified.o It is unclear from the results reported and the figures what the overall trajectories of self-compassion look like.It would be good to include a figure of each respondents overall self-compassion scores over time. Response: Our search for "more persistent pattern" in the manuscript did not show any results.So, it is difficult to identify and address the Reviewer's comment.Furthermore, it is pertinent to mention that we relied on multiple fit indices to identify statistically distinct trajectory groups (e.g., BIC, AIC).Additionally, we sometimes wrote that "This group […] was characterized by a negative linear function, suggesting that these low trajectories were more unstable and decreased over time".In this context, we assume that a linear function is more fluctuating than a constant function.Ultimately, we do not assume that groups show "more persistent patterns".
In -The exploratory analysis does not seem necessary.It is not in the remit of the paper, and opens up a completely new goal, and set of interpretations that have not been discussed in the introduction.I would recommend removing this section.
Response: We agree with you that the exploratory analysis is not necessary and might distract the reader from the main goals of the paper.We have thus moved this analysis in the online supplementary material.
Discussion 1) There are times that new information is built into the discussion that has not been mentioned in the rest of the paper.For example: a. Strikingly, this peak corresponds to the shape of self-compassion trajectories, suggesting that this tremendous increased number of confirmed cases may have led to a decrease in self-kindness, common humanity and mindfulness over time (from wave 3 to wave 9), among individuals belonging to low trajectory groupsthis is not presented in the results section and is not displayed in any of the figures for the reader to confirm.Putting this in the results section in a figure to show the corresponding change in self-compassion would be beneficial.
Response: As suggested, we have moved this figure in the results section and adjusted the text accordingly.We have also improved the figure to make it clearer for the reader.Specifically, we replaced the red dots with a grey zone.Ultimately, we placed this figure next to the trajectories to facilitate the comparison.We believe that merging these figures into a single graph would make it complicated for the reader.b.The discussion about self-compassion's structure.This could be used in the intro as a justification for focusing on three components, but it does not fit well in the discussion.
Response: Given the nature of our measure, we have significantly toned-down the debate surrounding the structural aspect of the self-compassion measure.However, please note that we have better justified the choice of the three positive components.
2) Conclusions are drawn which suggest self-compassion is a stable trait and also a state, however from my interpretation of the results, there is limited evidence that self-compassion changes drastically.It seems from Figure 2 that respondents levels of self-compassion stay in the remit of their trajectory group.Therefore, this suggests that perhaps self-compassion levels may change slightly over time and circumstance, but that in general, the categorical level of self-compassion will stay the same, therefore adding more support for selfcompassion as a trait then a state.
Response: We agree with you that compassionate self-responding is rather stable over time and variations are minor.We revised the manuscript accordingly.For example, we wrote in the results section: "Taken together, these results indicated that compassionate self-responding dimensions were rather stable over time with minor fluctuations and diminutions for some individuals." 3) The paper is also limited by common method bias which can inflate correlation scores.
Response: As suggested, we have included an additional limitation.Specifically, we wrote: "In addition, it is pertinent to note that the correlational design could have generated common method bias.These bias may occur in studies where data for both independent and dependent variables are obtained from the same person in the same measurement context, using the same item content, and similar item characteristics.In the present study, these bias might have inflated observed correlations." 4) I would also suggest that paper is limited by measures of mental health outcomes only being measured at one time point.There is evidence that mental health outcomes fluctuated as selfcompassion levels fluctuated.Ultimately, we would like to thank very much Reviewer 1 for his/her valuable and helpful feedback to improve our manuscript.We sincerely anticipate that you will approve this new version.

Response
and the reviewers for your detailed and encouraging comments on the previous version of our manuscript.With your feedback and support, we are happy to resubmit our improved manuscript.We believe we have effectively addressed the issues raised by yourself and the reviewers.Below, we detail how we have answered all the comments raised.Major changes in the manuscript are highlighted in green color for convenience.We are also including a clean version of the manuscript in which the changes are not visible.Importantly, we would like to inform you that we have included additional figures as requested by Reviewer 1 and reworked all figures to make them clearer for the readers.Moreover, following statistical practices for detecting complex trajectory shapes (i.e., cubic form), we successfully replicated all findings on participants who completed a minimum of 3 waves of data collection (N = 2458).Furthermore, we have removed Pr.Donald Taylor from the present work since he has unexpectedly passed away during the revision process.All authors agreed with this change.Additionally, we answered all of your queries: 1.We ensured that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements.2. We stated in the title page what role the funders took in the study.Specifically: "This study is part of a larger national research project financed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) that examines the social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadians (grant number = 170633, for more information, see https://csdc-cecd.wixsite.com/covid19csi?lang=en).
1) to identify trajectories of compassionate self-responding (i.e., self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness) during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic based on 10 waves of data collection (from April 2020 to November 2020), (2) to examine associations between compassionate self-responding trajectories and sociodemographic variables (i.e., age and gender), and (3) to compare compassionate self-responding trajectories on key mental health indicators assessed at the end of this study, in a large representative sample of Canadians (N = 2458 from an initial sample size of 3617 participants).To the best of our knowledge, the current research is the first to investigate trajectories of compassionate selfresponding in the context of dramatic social change (see de la Sablonnière, 2017)." in van der Nest et al., 2020).Doing so, we were not focusing on a difference of change from the baseline, but rather on fluctuation of self-compassion items between waves 1 and 10.We believe this approach provided more information on the dynamics of each measured construct.van der Nest, G., Passos, V. L., Candel, M. J., & van Breukelen, G. J. (2020).An overview of mixture modelling for latent evolutions in longitudinal data: Modelling approaches, fit statistics and software.Advances in Life Course Research, 43, 100323.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2019.100323 Fig 2. Multi-trajectory groups with 95% CI (dashed lines) by dimensions.Participants experiencing low (N = 97, 3.9% in purple), moderate-low (N = 965, 39.3% in orange), moderatehigh (N = 1149, 46.7% in blue) and high (N = 247, 10.0% in green) levels across the three dimensions.

Fig 3 .
Fig 3. Vaccine doses, daily new confirmed cases, ICU patients, and death cases in Canada.The grey zone indicates the period of our data collection.